Sonnets
by The Raisin Girl
Summary: A collection of unrelated one-shots inspired by Shakespeare's sonnets. Warnings posted at the start of every chapter in bold. Rated M for safety. Incredibly angsty Destiel, possible spoilers for all seasons.
1. Sonnet 144

**Sonnet 144**

_Two loves I have, of comfort and despair,_

_Which, like two spirits, do suggest me still;_

_The better angel is a man right fair,_

_The worser spirit a woman colored ill._

* * *

He feels nothing when he looks at Meg. Nothing disturbs his fragile inner balance, nothing deters the free meandering of his thoughts. He sees her true face, reads her history in it, but it doesn't matter. It's her pain, not his, unrelated to his. It doesn't remind him.

She is a constant presence in his room. Even Castiel, humorless as he usually was, would have found the idea of a demon watching over an angel highly ironic. In his current state however, Cas can only marvel at her. She is a peaceful, comforting presence, despite the swirl of anger and restlessness in her. She's beautiful.

He can barely stand to look at Dean. For one moment, after he woke up and Dean came to see him, he thought he could do it. He looked into Dean's eyes and was almost able to return that hopeful smile on Dean's lips. He thought maybe he would look into Dean's eyes and see God's plan, the way he saw it everywhere else. But Dean had always flouted whatever plans were made for him, hadn't he. He'd taught Castiel to do the same. When Cas looks at Dean he doesn't see peace or a purpose; he only sees every mistake he's ever made. After all, Dean was there for all of them.

So Cas doesn't look at Dean, and Cas doesn't let himself think too hard. He counts on his mind's tendency to follow its own patterns and paths, lets it roam and doesn't try to focus on anything. He looks at Meg, he studies her. She fits into the plan so well.

He senses Dean's frustration with him, but he doesn't look at it or try to fix it. He can't fix it, he knows that. He can make sandwiches, and watch the bees. They're such industrious little creatures, and they all follow the plan laid out for them. If they didn't, they would die, and so would the hive. The bees know this; why didn't Castiel? He asks himself this once, and it hurts so much that he has to stop watching the bees all together.

He knows, intellectually, that Meg is a demon. She's bad, not to be trusted. Dean is the one he can trust. Dean always does the right thing, even if it's hard. Dean is good, a righteous man. He should cling to Dean and shy from Meg…but as soon as he grasps this, his thoughts scramble and his mind wanders. Wonders? It meanders away.

Choosing Dean would mean facing all the mess behind that wall he's built up in his mind. It stings and aches sometimes, but he can keep those feelings at a distance as long as he isn't standing shoulder to shoulder with Dean Winchester.

He knows Dean is good and Meg is bad, but Meg makes him feel good and Dean makes him feel bad. Cas can't figure out how that fits together, what it means...and since it confuses him and scares him to try, he doesn't.

* * *

_Yet this shall I ne'er know, but live in doubt,_

_Till my bad angel fire my good one out._


	2. Sonnet 105

**Sonnet 105**

_Let not my love be called idolatry,  
Nor my beloved as an idol show,  
Since all alike my songs and praises be  
To one, of one, still such, and ever so._

* * *

Corrupted, they call him. Lost. They say he has fallen from grace, that Dean Winchester has ruined him for Heaven forever. How can they be so blind?

God gave him a mind and Dean taught him to use it, so Castiel considers the evidence:

He has disobeyed the plan that God laid out for His angels countless times, defied the will of Heaven and even killed brothers and sisters. Sometimes he was misguided and sometimes he was clear-headed, but no matter what he always did it for the same reason: Dean. Dean, this imperfect, scarred, incredible creature who shortens his name and hates his family, distrusts his entire species and questions his judgment. This impertinent, foul-mouthed collection of all the little iniquities…and yet somehow free of all the worst kinds of corruption. His siblings look down on Dean for his imperfections, but Castiel knows the truth.

He's amazing, and fascinating, and everything that Castiel knows his Father loves in humankind. How can his brothers and sisters fail to see it? God commanded them to love His favored children, and Castiel does. He loves Dean, heart and mind and body and soul. If God commanded it, and Castiel fulfills it so completely, how can he be the one who has gone astray?

Then there's the fact that Castiel is alive to think these thoughts in the first place. He has died twice at the hands of angels and once of his own stupidity, and yet he's here. He's come back every time just as he was before…sometimes better, and always in the body of Jimmy Novak. Jimmy is gone-killed by Lucifer-but his body remains for Castiel to wear, and why? An angel has no need for a vessel except to interact with human beings. Even if Castiel needed a vessel, it doesn't have to be Jimmy. Castiel can only think of one reason to stay with Jimmy Novak: It's the vessel that Dean knows.

So who could have brought him back, in the same body, every time? However shaken his faith has been by the events of the last few years, he can only conclude that it was God. God rewards his so-called disobedience each time with another chance, so Castiel thinks he must be doing something right in those celestial eyes. He may be defying Heaven, but he is also loving Dean. He's come to believe that this is his true purpose, and as long as he's doing that, God will be pleased with him.

He is glad of this. He's no longer sure he is suited to anything else.

* * *

_Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind,  
Still constant in a wondrous excellence;  
Therefore my verse to constancy confined,  
One thing expressing, leaves out difference.  
Fair, kind, and true, is all my argument,  
Fair, kind, and true, varying to other words;  
And in this change is my invention spent,  
Three themes in one, which wondrous scope affords._.


	3. Sonnet 57

**Sonnet 57**

_Being your slave what should I do but tend  
Upon the hours, and times of your desire?  
I have no precious time at all to spend;  
Nor services to do, till you require. _

"Of course. Your problems always come first."

Don't they though? Haven't they always? Even now, everything he's doing…isn't it all for Dean, to keep Dean safe? Yet he can't stop himself from letting slip that barbed comment. Maybe he isn't a very good angel, but he would have made an incredible human; he's so selfish. He doesn't begrudge Dean any of his help or time, but he does want to be appreciated sometimes. Would a moment of gratitude really kill the man?

Instead he gets angry questions about where he's been, what he's been doing to help retrieve Sam's soul. Does Dean ever ask him if he needs help?

Castiel thinks all these things and is ashamed. He should not feel this way; no angel should. But is it really so wrong to want Dean to acknowledge, just once, how much he does for him? Instead of acting like it was Castiel's job to throw himself into the line of fire over and over?

_Nor dare I chide the world without end hour,  
Whilst I, my sovereign, watch the clock for you,  
Nor think the bitterness of absence sour,  
When you have bid your servant once adieu;  
Nor dare I question with my jealous thought  
Where you may be, or your affairs suppose,  
But, like a sad slave, stay and think of nought  
Save, where you are, how happy you make those._

"It sounds so simple when you say it like that," he says, and he is thankful for the gravel of his voice that hides the cracks in it. "Where were you when I needed to hear it?"

"I was right there," Dean retorts. "Where were you?"

_I was fighting a war on two fronts and trying to fix your messes at the same time_, Castiel thinks_. I was trying to let you have a normal life. I was alone. I was right beside you. I was waiting for you to _want_ me to be right beside you._

He knows all of those things are true, but somehow he still thinks Dean is right. Does it stop him from going through with his plan? No. He's come too far, put in too much work, and he's at the end of his strength. He sees no other way out, and he takes it.

Only when he's up to his ears in Leviathan and coming apart at the seams does he fully admit how wrong he was. Of course, it's too late to do anything about it then. He manages to say he's sorry.

He's not gone; he sees all of it. He watches the grief overtake Dean's face and feels the water lapping at his ankles, then his knees, then filling his ears and nose and mouth as he wades into the lake. A tiny, selfish, corrupted little part of him wants to hate Dean—Dean, with his aversion to talking and his inability to see past his own problems, Dean who expected Castiel to somehow just know without being told that he could come to him for help—but he can't. This is his fault, not Dean's. He knows that. He thinks, at the last second, that even if Dean were somehow to blame, he couldn't do it.

A moment later there is a mad rush for the exits: purgatory's worst monsters are unleashed into the world in all directions, and Castiel just floats away.

_So true a fool is love, that in your will,  
Though you do anything, he thinks no ill._


	4. Sonnet 66

_**Warning: mentions of drug abuse and suicidal thoughts.**_

**Sonnet 66**

_Tired with all these, for restful death I cry,  
As to behold desert a beggar born,  
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity,  
And purest faith unhappily forsworn,  
And gilded honour shamefully misplaced,  
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted,  
And right perfection wrongfully disgraced,  
And strength by limping sway disabled  
And art made tongue-tied by authority,  
And folly, doctor-like, controlling skill,  
And simple truth miscalled simplicity,  
And captive good attending captain ill:_

He used to belong to a much better club.

Castiel remembers utter certainty and clarity of purpose. He remembers millennia spent in observance and understanding. Was it cold, blank at times? Yes. But whatever emptiness there was in humans that they sought to fill with companionship, he could fill with love for his Father, dedication to his purpose and loyalty to his family. He needed nothing else.

Now he needs everything, and has so little. Worse, he wants nothing. He has no purpose, his Father is silent, and his brothers and sisters have gone. The emptiness is terrible and he can't fill it up. He numbs it instead, loses himself in sex with women he doesn't love and uses various chemical substances to put a fog between his senses and all the ugliness of the world he lives in.

He still has Dean, he supposes…but the hard-eyed man he sees every day is not the one he fell for. That defiant, hopeful spark died when Sam said yes. Castiel watched it sputter and go out, helpless to stop it. Dean is not the righteous man that Castiel dragged from Hell, and Castiel sometimes hates him for it. He hates himself more. He was an angel; he's supposed to be able to fix things. That was the reason he fell in the first place, wasn't it? To help Dean fix things. He can't give Dean anything now: not hope, not help. He can't give Dean his brother back. He can't find God, and he stopped praying for His intervention a long time ago. He's useless, and he knows it. All he can give Dean is what's left of his life: another warm body to fire a gun at the Croats.

It would be so easy just to die. In fact, he thinks about it every day. When he wakes up, before he stumbles off his cot and shuts his brain up with his daily dose of painkillers, he thinks, _I could do it today._ No archangel blade needed, no assembly required. He's cut off from Heaven's power now, as mortal as a natural-born human being. A bullet to the head would probably do it.

He wonders where he would go. The angels have left; does Heaven even exist anymore? Even if it does, he doubts he'd be allowed in the door. Hell, then? Possibly. Maybe he would just cease to be all together. True oblivion.

It sounds incredibly…restful. He concentrates on that idea at night when he needs to grab a couple of hours of sleep, and drifts off thinking of how lovely it would be not to exist._ Maybe tomorrow_, he thinks.

Countless days, countless hours of cloudy numbness in a life marked by blood and bullets, endless misery and only the hope of more for every day he spends clinging to this mortal plane…and yet he never eats that bullet. He can't.

_Tired with all these, from these would I be gone,  
Save that, to die, I leave my love alone._


	5. Sonnet 27

**Sonnet 27**

_Weary with toil, I haste me to my bed,_  
_The dear repose for limbs with travel tired;_  
_But then begins a journey in my head_  
_To work my mind, when body's work's expired:_

Staring up at the ceiling, Dean tries to silence his troublesome thoughts and wills himself to sleep. He should know by now that it isn't going to work; he's been like this for weeks now, ever since he pulled Cas's trench coat out of that lake.

He can't stop thinking about it, and about the months that lead up to it. He can't stop replaying them in his mind, picking out every clear instance—so easy to see now that he could kick himself—when Cas needed his help and he was too wrapped up in his own shit to offer it. When he closes his eyes, he sees Cas's skin peeling off and his veins bulging black on his face, hears the high-strung, raspy voice of the Leviathan coming from his mouth, telling him this is his fault. He swears he can feel cool lake water eddying around his fingers as he reaches out and grasps that dirty trench coat floating on the surface…

He never thought he'd be thankful for forty years in Hell, but if it weren't for all the practice _those _nightmares had given him, he's sure he would end every other night by waking up screaming.

The worst part is that he can't mourn Cas in peace, can't miss him undeterred. He_ does_ mourn him, and he does miss him, but he's also pissed the fuck off at the guy. Dean rolls onto his side, curls in on himself just the slightest bit, tries to block out the thought. It fights its way to the surface this time, though, the way it does every time. _Cas, how could you? How could you lie to me? I trusted you._

_How could you_ not_ know you could come to me for help?_

It's a tangle of guilt and pain and betrayal and more guilt that keeps him awake night after night, until he either sees daylight or drifts off, only to find himself reliving Cas's death in his nightmares. He drinks more. He laughs less. There are dark circles under his eyes and he's less and less able to engage with his own sorry life with each passing day, right up until Bobby dies and Sammy snaps. Then, he's too busy trying to push that new grief down and keep his little brother from hallucinating to death to feel the sting of Cas's absence as much. He finally has something urgent enough to usurp that ache—and what does it say about his life that another big bad asshole trying to fuck up the world was too old hat to do it for him? Either way, he manages not to think about Cas, not to dream about him for days.

Right up until he turns around to see the man standing right there in front of him on the sidewalk. Right up until he watches him fell a group of demons, angel-style, with hardly any effort. Right up until Cas remembers everything he did, and looks at Dean with so much sadness, and drives himself insane to repair the damage he did to Sammy. Right up until he leaves Cas in that hospital with no one but a demon to watch over him, staring silently at the walls with haunted, empty eyes.

Dean doesn't sleep any more after that, not for days…and when he does, the new dreams he has make him long for the days when he only dreamt of a Leviathan-infested Cas blaming him for everything that has gone so very wrong.

_Lo! thus, by day my limbs, by night my mind,  
For thee, and for myself, no quiet find._


	6. Sonnet 117

**Sonnet 117**

_Accuse me thus: that I have scanted all,  
Wherein I should your great deserts repay,  
Forgot upon your dearest love to call,  
Whereto all bonds do tie me day by day;  
That I have frequent been with unknown minds,  
And given to time your own dear-purchased right;  
That I have hoisted sail to all the winds  
Which should transport me farthest from your sight._

Dean hates him. He must; how could he not? Emmanuel—_Castiel_—remembers what he did. He remembers the look on Dean's face with a horrible kind of clarity, and he doesn't know how he is ever going to make this better.

_You drove his brother insane. You nearly killed him. You tried to become God. You unleashed the darkest monsters of purgatory on his world…and one of those killed Bobby Singer. Dean Winchester will _never_ forgive you._

He doesn't even dare to hope; he remembers too well the way his gut twisted at the expression on Dean's face the moment Emmanuel first met him. He remembers the angry words Dean spoke in the car on the way to heal Sam. Dean trusted him, vouched for him in spite of evidence against him, and he…like all his brothers before him…betrayed him._ Left_ him. He let himself be seduced by power and fooled by his own good intentions, like all his brothers. Like Lucifer. Like Sam.

But how well Castiel knows that Dean has never loved him, or anyone, the way he loves Sam.

_Sam, who you hurt. _Sam_ is dying because of you._ For the first time in his existence, Castiel wishes for death to actually stick to him for once.

Castiel doesn't blame Dean for not forgiving him. He will never forgive himself. All of the justifications he'd recited in his head to make his actions okay-or at the very least, necessary-seem hollow now. He can see every place he went wrong with perfect clarity, and it honestly surprises him that Dean allows Castiel to be near him at all. He just hopes that Dean will allow this uneasy peace between them to last long enough for Castiel to make at least one thing right.

_Book both my wilfulness and errors down,  
And on just proof surmise accumulate;  
Bring me within the level of your frown,  
But shoot not at me in your wakened hate;_

As he approaches Sam's bed, he says a silent prayer—his first in a long, long time—that Dean will understand this as an act of penance, an apology, and know that whatever horrible things he did, he never did them to hurt Dean. Quite the opposite.

_Since my appeal says I did strive to prove  
The constancy and virtue of your love._


End file.
